The great times…

The greatest memories are sometimes the ones that hurt the most. The times of
laughter in the future bring back tears. Times of joy bring back depression.
I’ve had so many of these I just can’t seem to count them. Night and day, I have
a reflection on life; sometimes, when I try to fight back tears, they come out
over and over again. The greatest memory of my life is what I’m about to write
about.

One evening when I was really young, my mom and dad went out and bought
lobster for the whole family to eat. Usually, eating together isn’t a surprising
thing for a family, but for mine, it was very rare we would sit at the same
table. As we sat down, it seemed as though my sisters’ faces weren’t all that
comfortable sitting with the rest of the family. Usually they would get their
food and go up to the living room to eat. I was used to eating only with my
parents, at a restaurant or even at home. My bother came home often but didn’t
come home often enough as I put it.

As everyone sat down, dinner was finally served. We looked at the lobster and
smiled even my sister’s. Today everyone in the family was here. My mom, dad, two
sisters and brother. As we ate and ate, everyone was laughing talking and
finally communicating. In my brother’s and sisters’ opinions, I was the closest
to my parents. To them, they need to spend less time with my parents while I
want to spend more quality time.

When dinner was finished, I stayed at the table while my mom and sisters’
cleaned up. That night I kept on smiling just because I knew that I got to
experience what eating with the whole family was like… But that memory was too
short. After an hour and a half, all of it was just a memory, not reality any
more. I miss that setting and the smile on my face. I’ve smiled a lot before but
for some reason, the smile I used that night… was different than the others.

Right now, sitting in front of my computer typing this out, it just hurts to
know that memory may never return to my very sight. One of my sisters moved to
Toronto with my uncle, the other sister spends time with her boyfriend a lot,
and my brother doesn’t live with us. It seems as though the more I grow, our
family connections have been fading away, away and away becoming into a piece of
dust. Now, it seems as though those strings connecting each other have been cut.
I never had the guts to talk about this to my dad or my family because I knew
they would never understand.

-Linh Dang